The wealthy ate huge amounts. Ben Wilson writes that "When tourists arrived in England at the dawn of the 19c they expected to see two things: the overwhelming grandeur of the wealthiest country in history of the world and the fattest people who had ever walked the earth. The first was the extraordinary achievement of a strange people, the second the visible results of the victory of commerce and the bounties of empire. Benjamin Silliman, who came to London in 1805 as a representative of Yale University, described the scene in Hyde Park on a Sunday; saying "such an assemblage of burley corpulent people is probably not to be found in the world beside" [Ref: Wilson, Ben. Decency & Disorder: The Age of Cant 1789-1837 p3]